“Did you know that Jason Kenney was Stockwell Day’s chief of staff?”

(Previous.)

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!

…. “The CBC has commissioned a study to determine whether its news is biased, the president of the public broadcaster told the Senate finance committee this week.”
…. “CBC refused to comment on the study’s methodology Thursday.”

Why look! Someone’s asking “what do you think?”

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Toronto Star, March 2008: “Obama would win in Canada: Poll”
Toronto Star, May 2010: “Along with the Star, reporters from The Globe and Mail, Canwest News Services and the Miami Herald were prohibited from returning to Guantanamo Bay when the case resumes.”
I know what you’re thinking – “Guantanamo is still open? Geez. That seems almost newsworthy.

Seriously? You guys are running AP copy on your own sale?

(Links updated after our moral and intellectual superiors tasked with defending CBC journalism chose to redirect the original links to a bondage clad booby shot. As a metaphor for the strength of their arguments, it really doesn’t get much better than that.)
(Update 2: OK, OK, stop emailing me. The booby shot is here. It seems CBC employees have finally created repackaged something stolen from the private sector into something you want to see.)
After reading this; “Read ‘em and weep…the CBC News story”

It has been too easy to blame criticism on unhappy former employees who are disgruntled because they were pushed out. It has been too easy to point fingers at older viewers who don’t like change. It has been too easy to fall back on “it’s a work in progress” excuses. The truth is, and the numbers are all too clear, the new National is an abject failure that has not resonated with the viewing audience and worse, has turned many loyal news junkies away.
With the help of a mathematically inclined friend who has access to the ratings I put together a table that clearly shows how poorly The National is doing. But first an executive summary of our findings:
We used 70 programs (Monday-Friday) in 2009 from the beginning of January to the second week of April. The National average was about 804 thousand, while CTV News got 993 thousand.
This year, 2010, we looked at 59 programs during the same period. (The Olympics made 11 weekdays not applicable.) This time the National averaged 644 thousand, CTV News — 1257 thousand. That’s almost exactly double. […]
Two other small observations. Last year, there were 9 days when The National actually got higher numbers than CTV. This season, it never got close. The other thing is that we picked a period when The National‘s ratings were actually UP! If you were to look at the September-December stretch, CTV’s numbers were regularly more than double, sometimes, even triple those of CBC’s flagship news program… The numbers are even more startling than we expected.

Source: http://www.theteamakers.com/2010/04/21/why-we-leak/#comment-12069

… all I can say is “Over to you, Shotgun Boy”.

I have painting to do.

We leaked these documents because we thought it would spark a discussion worth having. We leaked these documents because we thought people should read them, and because we wanted to hear what you thought about them. And we wanted Cathy Perry and Jennifer McGuire to hear what you thought, too.

And I linked them for the schadenfreude. Because, God knows they stopped hearing what their (former) audience thinks a long time ago.

“When you buy a newspaper, you aren’t buying news – you’re buying judgment. Already in this low tech world of instant communications there is too much news. That’s the problem. Raw news will do just fine if you’re a computer buff and want to play editor. But I, for one, would rather let a professional take the first raw cut at history and spend my leisure time fishing.”

Via Newsosaur

Dear Diary,

I have never been so discouraged and dispirited. My skills are being wasted, and the only challenge in my working life now is dealing with the incredibly increased stress level. I don’t see opportunities to do strong journalism. I feel I work for a corporation that no longer understands public broadcasting…

The rest is here – because I like to end the day on a high note!
Update – Related!

Via Hot Air.

Politico;

Ed Chen, a White House correspondent for Bloomberg News who is president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, said he asked for the meeting “to clear the air because in my 10-plus years at the White House, rarely have I sensed such a level of anger, which is wide and deep, among members over White House practices and attitude toward the press.”

The morning after.

It’s their nature…

That’s funny… just last week nobody was talking presumption of innocence… they were all, to a man, just screeching non-stop about hookers & blow.

It’s why, when I receive a request from a “journalist” to remove an old post from the archives, who states it’s embarrassing and shows up on Google searches, where it might interfere with his ability to find work as a freelancer …and that I’ve probably come to my senses since writing it…
In the interest of fairness, I asked if he’d revisited the drive-by he pulled for Pat Martin back on May 22nd of 2006, in light of events of early June.

You mean the case where most of the charges were stayed and the crazy guy in Toronto was buying fertilizer and going out to some farm for target practice with a bunch of kids, and the cops were watching them all along? You mean that’s why they added the swat squad to the motorcade? I would put in one of those email joke faces there, but I can’t stand them. If I were to re-visit the wider topic, it would be how Harper and Obama get along so well.

Yeah, that one.
Tim Naumetz, meet the blogosphere.
It happens when thousands of fed up Canadians cancel their newspapers, click off the televisions, and turn to the net in search of sources who don’t treat them like idiots.
So, that “Google rank” thing? It’s not a bug – it’s a consequence.

Now is the time at SDA when we intellectualize!
CNN, February 2010

SANCHEZ: I’ll tell you what people will complain about when they hear that statement. It’s the sense that there is a push among certain people in our country for almost non-intellectualism. In other words, the smarter you are, the less we’re interested in what you have to say.
KAPLAN: Anti-intellectualism- yeah.
SANCHEZ: Right, anti-intellectualism.

CNN, April 2010

SANCHEZ: I was just asking Chad, how can you get a volcano in Iceland? [Myers laughs]. Isn’t it too- when you think of a volcano, you think of Hawaii and long words like that. You don’t think of Iceland.
MYERS: Right.
SANCHEZ: You think it’s too cold to have a volcano there. But no! There it is.

It’s hard to believe that a major cable network employs a man who’s unaware that the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees.
h/t bruce wayne riley

“The eruption under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier continued to spew large amounts of ash and smoke into the air…”

So, I’m working away here, catching up on non-blog projects as bits and pieces of the Helen Guergis scandal de jour trickle out of the radio.
I think it was the word “miscarriage” that caught my attention.
I once thought I knew how to recognize a political scandal – an American president lying under oath; operatives diverting public funds into party coffers; a cyclist killed in a pique of road rage.
As it turns out, a scandal can be brought forth into existence through the singular act of a political reporter speculating before a camera while using the word “unclear”.
This presents a dilemma for me, as a blogger.
I have emails in my inbox, opened but unmentioned. Lots of them. Rumours, allegations, “word on the street” stuff.
A recent word on the streeter pertains to a Liberal member of parliament’s rumoured relationship with a well-known CTV personality.
That’s pretty juicy stuff, I suppose – we’d all recognize the names. But, it’s all I have – a couple of emails. It might not be true. If it’s proven to be true, it’s still sort of personal.
And that’s the dilemma. I don’t know what to do with that. So, when I don’t know what to do with a story that involves unsubstanciated claims about the personal affairs of others, I turn to our betters in mainstream journalism and ask myself, “What would Bob Fife do?”

” Yes, Lloyd, while there’s no indication that the parties in question have done anything illegal, it could raise conflict of interest questions in the minds of some, and prove embarrassing to the network.”
“Thanks Bob – we’ll be watching for that one.”

Maybe I could simply find a few quotes by respected CTV speculationists and replace the names they use with the names given to me and attach the word “unclear”.
With a question mark for good measure?

“[The] Valley Morning Star in Harlingen, TX, dismantled a months-old pay wall after its traffic collapsed by some 40%.”
Proving yet again that Marshall McLuhan was an idiot.
The medium is not the message.
The message is the message.

“As I evolved politically, I stopped watching political TV shows because of their bias….”

“They just appeared to think they knew the subject well enough, or had a set enough idea in their heads as to what this kind of story was about, that they pursued only the lines of questioning necessary to fill in the blanks of that presumed story line.”

“On nothing more than a story in the paper and armed with no evidence, Fife laid out “the issue,” based on his personal suspicions.”

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation asked Sheldon Kennedy to come on TV — but said they could only put him on the air to tell his story if they could find a representative of “the other side” for “balance.”
SDA program reminder: Please click all of the links before you comment.